Sports

Farrington stuns everyone — even herself

Americans claim gold, bronze in women's halfpipe

Kaitlyn Farrington waits for the final results to come in during the women's halfpipe event Wednesday at the Sochi Olympics. The wait was worth it as she finished first. (JAVIER SORIANO / Getty)

KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia — — Most every Wednesday before school, a teenage Kaitlyn Farrington and her dad would load up a cow — sometimes two — and drive from their Idaho ranch near Sun Valley an hour down the road to the livestock auction house in Shoshone.

There they would part with the cow and Farrington would leave with enough cash to cross the country for another snowboarding contest.

The cows are long gone now, but on Wednesday night, on the biggest stage of her life, Farrington paid her parents back by winning Olympic gold in the halfpipe at the Sochi Winter Games.

Grasping a cutout of her face with the words "Cowboy Up!" and bedecked in red, white and blue, Gary and Suze Farrington shared their daughter's amazement that the U.S. Snowboarding's dark horse rider had just eclipsed stars such as Torah Bright and Kelly Clark, who took silver and bronze in the fifth Olympic display of halfpipe snowboarding.

"We knew they could all do it," Gary said of the final four runs of the contest, which saw Farrington clinging to a precarious lead as three previous gold medal Olympians made their descent. "I've been shaking all over. My phone has been vibrating so hard I thought it was me."

Facing an arsenal of reporters moments later, the stunned 24-year-old with the golden nose ring answered several questions with the phrase "I can't believe ..."

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That she won gold.

That she was sitting on top after Clark, Bright and Hannah Teter's first run.

That she was on the podium with two other gold medal winners.

That she bested the seemingly invincible Clark.

"It's crazy. Snowboarding is changing so much, it's anyone's game on any day," she said, noting she had not been harboring any "Olympic gold medal dream." "I didn't think I was going to get a gold medal until right now."

The former swimmer and horse racer whose swim coach used to tell her to "cowboy up" when it came time to compete, has barely had time to foment an Olympic dream. In a whirlwind few weeks, Farrington won the fifth and final Olympic halfpipe qualifying contest in Mammoth on Jan. 18, locking the final spot on the Sochi-bound team. The next weekend she took bronze at the X Games.

She said she was barely able to absorb the fact she was going to the Olympics until she boarded a plane bound for Sochi.

The day before Wednesday night's contest, her plan to reach finals was to ski through both qualifiers. She threw a different series of tricks in each round, an extremely rare juggling act.

Her semifinals run "was extra practice," she said.

"It gave me that advantage of getting more comfortable with the pipe," Farrington said.

It worked. Her second-run switch 720 and backside 900 featured stylish grabs, amplitude and solid landings, earning her 91.75 points. Teter scrubbed her second run. Bright's score fell a quarter point shy, earning silver. Clark, who crashed hard on her first run, landed her lofty 1080 — the only woman who throws the gyrating trick — but scored 90.75 for bronze. All three on the podium were within a point.

"I think tonight was one of the hottest events I've been in for a long time," said 14-year pro Bright.

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